Orvieto

I write this as we travel by train from Orvieto to Florence passing through some of the most beautiful countryside you could hope to see. We have just passed the hilltop town of Cortona where the movie “Under the Tuscan Sun” was filmed. It’s a journey of some 2 hours 20 minutes so I have time to reflect on our visit to Orvieto.

To say we loved Orvieto would be an understatement. The narrow cobbled streets and that sort of haphazard street layout that typifies these medieval hilltop towns is as endearing as it is fascinating for someone who has lived all their life in a country whose history only dates back some two hundred years. We love this place, we only arrived here at 4:30 yesterday on the train from Rome.

From the train station it is a short 100m walk across the road to the Orvieto Funicular which is a cable car on a steep angle the raises you the 300 metres up the steep sides of the town and deposits you at the top inside the walled section of the town. From there it was a walk of about twenty minutes along the main street that runs the full length of the town. A little bit of a slog dragging our bags with us but the destination was well worth the effort.

La Casa Di Tufo was a very nice B&B to stay at and deserving of the 9.3 satisfaction index awarded by booking.com. Our host, Jasmine was very friendly. We walked to one of the nearby cafes for dinner and Di had the best Puttanesca she has ever had and I had Spaghetti Carbonara washed down with a glass of wine, fantastico. We were very tired after the journey so we decided to have an early night, we were in bed by 9:30pm and both slept for 10 hours and woke up refreshed.

After a breakfast provided by our host we went for a walk along the wall of the town, this was one of the hidden treasures that our host Jasmine told us about we were alone on this walk, what stunning views of the surrounding countryside. See our Orvieto gallery for the photo’s.

After our walk I wanted to have a look at the Orvieto Underground. This is a network of caves and hewn out crevices that hundreds of years ago housed wine barrels as it had the three things that the say are necessary for good wine production, constant cool temperature all year round, darkness and no noise. There were other things in these underground areas too, they had a type of garbage chute hewn into the rock so those in the homes above would deposit their rubbish in these chutes, it would fall deep down into these underground collection points and then the medieval sanitation  department would collect it from there and dispose of it. These caves were also used to distribute the water supply throughout the town. There were a number of wells that still have water in them. There were also other areas that looked like they were used as public baths with pools created in the rocks, although they say they are not certain of their intended use.

We really liked the fact that it was a lot less crowded in Orvieto than a lot of the tourist destinations we have been to so far and far cleaner, no graffiti here. The streets are lined with the quaintest cafe’s and restaurants, plenty of shops to satisfy Di, although the shopping was a little more expensive here than other locations so we didn’t buy much. Anyway we loved, loved, loved Orvieto and if you ever drive or take the train from Rome to Florence don’t just drive by, stop and take a look you will be glad you did. (I sound like an advertisement for the Orvieto Department of Tourism don’t I?)

On to Florence.